Mead on the Self

Part One - The Me

1. According to Mead to have a self means to be able to take oneself as an object or more simply
put it means to be able to reflect on oneself. As we have seen if consciousness is a directedness
(intentionality or transcendence) towards a perceived, imagined or cognitive object, one thing
consciousness can perceive, imagine or think about is itself.

2. Now from Mead’s point of view when I reflect on myself the part of the self that is doing the
reflecting is the “I” and the part that is reflected upon is the “me”.

3. Thus when I think about myself as a teacher, it is my I that does the reflecting and it is the role that
I play or the image or idea that I have of myself as a teacher that is the “me”. But of course we also
think about our own thinking all the time, for example whenever we reflect on what we have just
said, whenever we wonder about why we have the thoughts we have or whenever someone else asks
us to explain why we believe what we believe. Thus the thoughts that I have had (and can think
about or reflect upon) also belong to my me.

4. It is important to understand then that the me does not imagine, think, perceive or do anything.
The me is not a subject, it is not a consciousness and it certainly is not self-reflective, the me rather
is a social role, image or idea that I might have about myself but it is also any aspect of myself that I
can objectify like my dreams, my thoughts, my beliefs etc .

5. For instance when little boys and little girls are learning what it means to be a boy or a girl they are
learning how to think about themselves in certain ways, how to embody certain ideals, how to “put
on” or manufacture a certain image or look etc. The part of the self that does the learning, embodying,
manufacturing and reflecting once again is the I, and on the other hand the ideal, idea and image etc.
is the me to the extent that an I identifies with that ideal or sees itself as the embodiment of that ideal
to some extent.

6. For Mead however I can only take myself as an object if I can see myself through the eyes of
someone else, that is I must be able to see myself as I see others or to put this in another way I
must be able to take myself as the other of someone else’s gaze.

7. To see oneself as a boy or girl then is to see oneself as the embodiment of an ideal that will be
visible to others, in short I must perform myself as a certain version of masculinity or femininity that
I know others will recognize. In other words to have a self requires that I must be able to take
myself as an object or better socially defined role that can only exist in a socially determined
“game.” Mead defines gaming in opposition to playing (see Hunting on Mead R99).

8. Mead defines the me as the “internalization of the generalized other” (and it can be linked as a
result to Freud’s notion of the superego). Internalization is when you take the way someone else
sees you and you come to see yourself that way too. Thus if a father is always telling his son that he
thinks he is smart, the son will come to see himself that way, he will take the father’s view (which is
external) and make it internal by adopting the same view. If the me is the “internalization of the
generalized other” then all that means is that the me is a general role or ideal – that initially belongs
to others - that the individual takes as its own. Thus for example a young teacher may try to be like
the teachers he always liked. (Importantly as we will see shortly the internalization belongs to the I).

9. Mead’s baseball analogy is a simple yet far-reaching illustration of what the me is all about.
Basically to learn how to play baseball means to learn certain roles, rules and goals. To learn the role
of first baseman for example is to learn what the objectives of the team on the field are and how
those objectives are to be reached. More specifically however it is to learn what I can reasonably
expect from others and what they can reasonably expect from me given what the roles, rules and
objectives of the game are. Mead’s important claim however is that ALL social relations and ALL
socially defined roles (mother/daughter, husband/wife, student/teacher, friend/friend,
employer/employee etc.) function exactly like baseball. Thus to learn one’s role as a teacher is to
know what you can reasonably expect from your students, and to learn one’s role as a student is to
learn what you can reasonably expect from your teachers. But knowing what you can and cannot
expect from your friends works the same way. And to the extent that the self is in part a me it is
clear that the self is in large measure a product of the social games one must join in order to
have a sense of who you are.

10) Knowing who you are then, that is, knowing what one’s role is, is all about knowing who you
are NOT. But this exclusion extends to all social relations. For example to know one is a boy
implies that you know what a girl is and that you are NOT that. To know you are the teacher is to
know what it means to be a student and in what sense your rights and responsibilities are not
the same.

Part Two - The I

1. It is not surprising that Mead defines the self in largely social terms, that is, as the embodiment of
social norms, values and more specifically roles. He is after all a sociologist. (Thus in the same way
Plato thought the natural world is the embodiment of immaterial forms or ideals, Mead thought that
part of the self, namely the me, is the embodiment of social forms or ideals).

2. On the other hand Mead recognizes that there is another part of the self that is not just about the
embodiment of and identification with a socially defined ideal or role in a socially defined game, that
part of the self is what makes us individuals and not just “generalized roles”; that part is the I.

3. The “I” is essentially an existential version of consciousness. Mead even goes so far as to say that
the I is a “pure consciousness” and a “creative response” to the me.

4. He also says that the I is always in the present while the me is always in the past. What this
means is that consciousness is always in the present but the social roles that we perform and embody
belong to existing and often time worn ideals that belong to the past. Even a decision like deciding to
become a student at Dawson illustrates this point. Thus it is the I that decides - in a present moment -
to confirm the school’s acceptance, but as soon as the confirmation letter has been sent and the
school fees have been paid the individual’s me has changed, because now the individual can identify
themselves as a “Dawson Student.” But this identification (which owes to a past decision) can easily
change of course as soon as the individual decides to stop their studies or to switch to another school.

5. Thus if according to Mead to have a self or to be a self requires that one take oneself as an object
and one can only take oneself as an object in a social context, from the point of view of the I it is
crucial that we underline that it is only the I that can perform this task of taking the views of others,
taking the views of others perhaps only to reject them, to adapt or revise them.

6. This however has major implications for Mead’s theory for if the I can actually change the me,
choose between competing mes (for example, choose between being a student at Dawson or
Vanier), abandon past mes or perhaps even invent their own mes (for example, their own
personalized way of being a teacher), then the me is not a product of society alone and the I
might be rightly characterized as the existentialists argued as the author of the self.

7. At times Mead seems to want to have it both ways, that is, he wants to say that the me is a social
phenomenon alone – the internalization of the generalized other – and also hold that the I is the
seat of a unique voice, creative response and pure consciousness. But this is not possible. Either
the I can be the author of the me or not, and if not the I will be better described as a narrator of
social narratives and ideals it did not itself author. On the other hand if the I can determine the
nature of the me, the me is not a social phenomenon alone. Or perhaps we can think of the I as a
co-author of the me or perhaps even as a juggler of multiple mes?